Chemical Burn
by irishais
Summary: He's managed to stay alive for two years and change, and it's almost an insult that they've sent Chicken after him.


.c h e m i c a l b u r n.

_-irishais-_

_i. shatter_

It had taken him fifteen extra seconds to yank the top off of a potion and pour it down his throat, just enough to take the edge off of the pain rocketing through his hand, and in those fifteen seconds, Seifer Almasy has run like hell.

Zell cannot think of anything that he currently hates more in this world than slippery fucking ex-knights who hide _pistols_ in deep pockets. Pistols! Pop guns compared to the gunblade that Almasy was usually toting. He should count his blessings. Instead, his hand is throbbing; the potion slows the bleeding, but the wound goes clear through, and it will take stitches and an experienced surgeon to patch him back together.

Man, when he gets his hands on Almasy, he's going to pound the fucker's face in.

He scrambles over a fallen tree, his movements not as precise as he would have liked with all the encumbrance of his heavy snow gear, and his landing is awkward, _cadet_. Zell swears, and swears again, a litany of every fucking thing that he is going to call the bastard when he's finally got him in handcuffs, when they're not on some crazy chase through the Trabian mountains. Zell has officially designated this place as the Ass-End of Hell. Maybe, when he gets back to some place warm, he'll work up a business plan, sell timeshares.

_Fuck. _

There it is, the flash of Almasy's faded red sweater, looking like he'd nicked it out of the freebie bin of some thrift store, cigarette burns in the hem. Zell hears the low _whump_ of the airship, Xu at the stick, flying too low to really be safe.

Zell runs, his hand bleeding a trail of crimson splotches in his wake. It'd be just his luck if some monster came out of nowhere and _ate him_, because Almasy had to be a moron and shoot a SeeD. He should've gone into that crappy cabin in layers of Protect and Shell.

Should've _known_.

_xx_

Seifer skids around a tree, runs _hard_, faster than he's run in years—no one _said _they had a bounty on his head, much less that _Balamb _was going to be the one after him. The Garden Council must really hate him.

He sucks great mouthfuls of air into his burning lungs and decides Leonhart must _really _think that Seifer's going to go down that easily, because it's damn near an insult to send Chicken after him.

_Fuck, _it's cold. The wind smacks him hard around his face, and shards of snow jab his cheeks, his hair beating against his ears like thin needles. His heart throbs hard against his ribs.

Seifer runs.

The frozen wind is so cold it practically burns him, sliding through the fat, ugly cables in a sweater made from thin acrylic—the shirt he wears under it may as well not even be there, because sharp fingernails of air criss-cross his chest, feeling like a perverse lover's touch.

Seifer runs.

He'd held out for two years, forty-seven days, three hours and change, when Dincht came charging through his front door, eliminating all the carefully stored heat that Seifer had accrued with one powerful kick. Funny—_fucking pitiful—_that he was more pissed about the door than the fact that Zell Dincht was mouthing off about Seifer's imminent arrest, thanks to the powers-that-be.

The coffee had been absolutely fresh, hot and strong, the way _real _men drank it. The mug had clattered off the edge of the table when Seifer removed his hands from it, and pulled the pistol out from his pocket.

You never knew what animals would come creeping around at night in these woods.

Seifer runs, and would swear if it didn't hurt to breathe, because there's a hot, ferocious wind against his back, a howl—a blacksmith's sharpening wheel against steel. He knows the sound. He spends enough time sharpening the edge of Hyperion when it's grown dull from too many deer, too many Snow Lions getting too close for comfort.

Something drops around him, a metal scream tearing down from the sky, and he stumbles into it, tearing at the silver flashing in front of his face, finding himself snatched up by a metal net, the strings tangling around his limbs, his legs still kicking as he tries to regain purchase on the ground. It doesn't work, and he reaches out for branches, tearing off handfuls of leaves as he tries to keep himself from being hauled away. The net lifts him up, up, up, breaking through the canopy of trees so that the sun assaults his eyes and he thinks that he might be rendered blind by it.

The net pulls him up, and when he looks, it is pulling him up into the open belly of a hideous red airship—_Ragnarok_, he thinks, and it's an appropriate thought, because the world must be ending when he can make out Leonhart's face looking down at him through the hatch.

_xx_

He sits in front of a panel of inquisitors, and figures they're probably going to burn him in lieu of a witch. It'd be acceptable, glorious, even. Fire's always been his element.

Seifer sits, with his handcuffed hands clasped before him on a small card table. They've chained him to the chair, and put a glass of water in front of him, just out of reach without having to stretch for it. Funny people. He can't believe he didn't blow them up when he had the chance. He had a Garden, he had the missiles, and he'd missed the goddamned thing.

The prison blues they've issued him itch around the collar, and he lifts his hands off the table to scratch his neck. This could be anything, any trial, any standard disciplinary rebuttal. He considers scratching his groin just to make the execs in front of him even more uncomfortable.

Seifer studies the panel in front of him—it's Trepe, her hair all bound severely at the base of her neck rather than the ridiculous poof she usually has. The hair ages her—she avoids his gaze. A SeeD he almost recognizes sits next to her, a woman with short brown hair and a cruel smirk on her lips. Next to her, Leonhart, looking not _at _Seifer, but just above him, probably at the clock above his head, or at the SeeDs standing guard at all the windows and doors in the room. Chicken's at the end of the line, drumming the fingers of one hand against the table. The other is bandaged up with pristine white gauze strips. He is the only person who stares unflinching at Seifer, the screwed-up expression on his face making him look like he's gone and shit himself rather than being intimidating. It's the stupid tattoo, Seifer thinks.

There are a few other SeeDs that Seifer doesn't know and doesn't care to know, but he assumes they're the "impartials" from the International Council for Garden Institutions that attend every court martial in the world. They don't even look at him, probably more concerned with lunch than whether or not he's going to be gunned down or locked up forever. It makes him want to laugh—they're the bastards who put out the bounty on him in the first place, withdrawing their forgiveness for his war crimes, after falling for the possession bit. Maybe they're not as stupid as he thought. Maybe moving speeches from former Headmasters and their wives don't work as well as they ought to.

He thinks he recognizes the man at the end, the one with all the rankings of a general decorating his chest. Caraway, of course, the newest replacement for former headmaster Martine. Seifer remembers seeing the reports from Fisherman's Horizon, so long ago. He also remembers being chased out of the Caraway manor by the guy, still trying to put his shirt back on as he jumped the hedges. Still remembers Rinoa in the doorway, yelling at them both.

The clock behind him is digital, Seifer knows—he's been in the disciplinary room enough times to have it memorized—but it's almost like he can hear it ticking with the silence in the room. Noisy goddamned pixels.

He looks at each of them again in turn, and the SeeD he almost knows is the only other one outside of Chicken Wuss to return his gaze coolly. _Xu_, he think abruptly. Her hair's shorter and her face has more lines in it than it did, but it's definitely Xu.

"Miss me?" he says, directing his words at her but catching the attention of the entire panel. She doesn't dignify him with a response.

Down the line, Leonhart clears his throat and calls the trial of Seifer Almasy to order. To call it a trial is a misnomer—no evidence is displayed, and he barely gets a chance to argue, because everything they're accusing him of, he did, even if it only comes to him in half-remembered dreams sometimes. There is enough video evidence that was released all over the 'net after the war to prove it. All he can do is sit in his chair with a sneer on his face and watch. There's no point in fighting this.

The verdict is handed down, and it is death by firing squad, three days from now.

It's not a witch burning, but it may as well be.

_xx_

A breeze dances across her skin, and Rinoa Heartilly opens her eyes. Her fingers have gone white from how tightly she's been clasping her hands, and she doesn't want to call it praying, but it almost is, begging something she doesn't know exists.

She loosens her hands and looks up at the sky. The stair she sits on is warmed by the sun, and all around her, Balamb Garden's students go on with their day, oblivious or just ignoring the fact that the most important trial in the world is going on just inside Garden's walls. Banishment is what she prays for, that Seifer will simply be sent away, free to pick his life up where it left off. She knows he will never be free in the most technical sense—after this, at best, Garden will always be watching him. The whole _world _will be watching him, waiting to see him make one false move that could start the whole cycle over again. If that happens, they'll kill him on sight, like a rabid dog.

It hurts just thinking about it. She wasn't even permitted access to the brig when they brought him in, shackled at wrists and legs, walking with the condemned man's shuffle. She had caught sight of him only for a moment, and he hadn't even acknowledged her, hauled into the bowels of Garden wearing not the grey coat that indicated glory and knightliness, but a tattered, ugly red sweater.

Would that be the last image she would have of him? Or would they—would _Squall _permit a visit? It's silly to think like that, because of course he would, he's not a _monster_, not unless they've gone and killed him inside right now, just to get it over with—

She hears a sound like a gavel slamming, and practically jumps out of her skin. The sound is one of Squall's stray thoughts, imagining a more dramatic ending to the trial than what's happened. Rinoa focuses in on him as much as she can—she feels anger, and a sense of acceptance—Squall's resigned himself to this, the fact that he has to deliver Seifer's fate.

_Death_, he proclaims, and it feels like someone has punched her in the gut, all of her air whooshing out of her in one great exhalation.

They will put him in front of a line of men and women who want nothing more than one good, clear shot, who will be able to fire until he is torn apart, until he is nothing more than skin and guts and blood pooling across the headlines.

She has to put her head between her legs. She thinks she's going to be sick.


End file.
